My mouth went dry.
The fear rose in the same place it always did—under my ribs, tight and irrational, as if my body didn’t trust my own house anymore. My brain started listing risks like it always did.
Trip. Fall. Fire. Stuck.
Add to that the fresh memory of nearly backing her against a cabinet and kissing her like I hadn’t lost anything at all. The idea of crashing down these stairs—or crashing headfirst into whatever that was between us—made my stomach drop in the same ugly way.
My jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
No.
I wasn’t doing this for her. I wasn’t proving anything. I wasn’t trying to be some version of myself she could admire or justify almost kissing in her head later.
I was just ... tired of living like I’d already lost. Tired of being the guy who slept on a couch and pretended wanting things was above his pay grade now.
My fingers tightened around the banister until the tendons in my hand stood out.
This isn’t a big deal. We’ve gone up before, and we can always come back down. Stop making this more than it is.
I lifted my foot and set it on the first stair. The house creaked softly, the sound almost like a sigh. My pulse thundered in my ears as I shifted my weight forward, testing. The prosthetic held. My knee locked. My balance caught.
A breath left my lungs in a shaky exhale.
I climbed another step. Then another.
By the time I reached the landing, my thigh was burning, my shoulders were tight, and my skin was damp at the back of my neck like I’d been hauling lumber instead of climbing the staircase in my own damn house.
My bedroom door waited at the end of the hall, half shadowed, quiet, and closed.
It looked like a stranger’s room.
I stepped toward it, slower now, each movement deliberate and controlled. The air up here was cooler, less lived in, smelling faintly of cedar and clean sheets and something I used to think meant comfort.
My hand lifted.
My palm settled against the doorknob of my bedroom, the metal cool beneath my skin.
My chest rose and fell, too fast, my heart kicking like it didn’t trust what I was about to do.
Across the hall, another floorboard shifted—soft and small, like someone had moved in bed or stood up.
My fingers tightened on the knob anyway.
It turned beneath my grip.
The primary bedroom greeted me like a place I’d built for someone else, the bed made too neatly, the comforter smoothed flat, the pillows stacked and untouched as if nobody had ever laid a head there. Moonlight leaked through the curtains in pale strips, painting the floor and the edge of the dresser in winter gray.
I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, the sound soft, controlled, like I could keep everything contained if I moved carefully enough.
My prosthetic felt heavier the second I crossed the threshold, my body suddenly hyperaware of what it would cost me to get out of this room quickly if I had to. My throat tightened with the familiar irrational panic, that ugly certainty my brain liked to feed me in the dark.
Fire. Smoke. Stairs. Clara’s mouth, inches from mine.
My jaw clenched as I crossed to the bed anyway, refusing to let the fear—of upstairs or of wanting her—decide for me tonight.
I lowered myself onto the edge of the mattress with a slow exhale, the springs shifting under my weight in a way that felt almost shocking after months of couch cushions and half sleep and the constant readiness to move. The bed was soft and generous. It cradled me and welcomed me to stay.
My hands went to my thigh on instinct, fingers pressing through fabric as if I could anchor myself to something solid. The phantom pain flickered, a low static in the background, and my shoulders tightened like my body thought it was still braced for impact.
